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ADDRESS BEFORE THE 

KNOX COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY 

GALESBURG, ILLINOIS 

r^^-' " BY 

E' S. WILLCOX OF PEORIA, ILL. , 

APRIL 28, 1906. 



A tew years ago in Boston, having 
an hour to spare, I left the busy 
crowds on Tremont street, crossed 
Charles river and discovered what I 
was seeking, a diminutive park 
known as Winthrop Square, hidden in 
the heart of the residence district of 
Charlestown. 

This square, perhaps twice as large 
as our Galesburg square, is neatly in- 
closed with an iron fence, has green 
grass plats, neatly kept walks, fine 
old shade trees and comfortable seats 
for people seeking quiet or rest. The 
wide entrance to the square is flanked 
on each side by large bronze tablets, 
some eight feet wide by twelve feet 
high, I should say, on the faces of 
which are inscribed in imperishable 
letters, the names of the officers and 
soldiers who fell in the battle of 
Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775 — eleven 
officers and one hundred and forty- 
two men. 

Sitting there that June afternoon 
and looking between the massive 
bronze tablets along the rising street, 
I saw Bunker Hill and its noble mon- 
ument towering in solemn isolation 
before me. 

I w-as there in search of one name 
in particular, said to be inscribed on 
those bronze pages. In a separate 
panel at the bottom I found the name 
, of Maj. Gen. Joseph Warren across 
the whole face of the panel and 
above his name one line — Dulce et 
decorum est pro patria mori — the 
words he uttered when going to meet 
his death in battle. Then follow in 
double columns the names of ten 
other officers who fell that day. 

The fifth name under that of War- 
ren was the one I was looking for, 
that of Capt. William Meacham. My 
mother's name was Mary Meacham, 
•Capt. Meacham was her grandfather, 
my great-grandfather. 

My mother had often told me that 
her grandfather was killed in that 



battle and there now at last"^I read 
his name inscribed on that immortal 
roll. 

Alone there on that quiet June 
day, my thoughts wandered back one 
hundred and twenty years to %vhat 
was once doing on this hallowed 
ground. The mighty rumble and 
roar of a great city of half a million 
people behind me I no longer heard, 
I no longer saw its busy streets, its 
marble fronts, its towers and tem- 
ples; they were melting away from 
my vision like some cloud-built, van- 
ishing dream on the far off horizon. 
I .saw^ instead a little town of seven- 
teen thousand souls, called Boston, 
garrisoned by hostile British soldiers. 
I saw^ three thousand of them in the 
early morning hurriedly crossing 
Charles' river and forming in line on 
the shore below me. I heard the 
sharp commands of Howe and Pigott 
and Percy and Pitcairn forming their 
well drilled veterans for the assault, 
and on the height above them I dis- 
covered the heads of a few' hundred 
New England farmers, militia men, 
with picks and shovels throwing up 
a small redoubt and line of low 
earthworks to oppose them. I 
heard fife and drum, the measured 
tread of armed men marching proud- 
ly up the hill as on parade, but no 
sound from the breastworks before 
them; I saw Prescott walking calmly 
along the parapet steadying and en- 
couraging his men and I heard Put- 
nam call out. "Don't fire, boys, till 
you see the white of their eyes!" 

It was a moment of awful sus- 
pense, the red coats were within 
thirty yards when Prescott cried 
"Fire!" Then from that low wall 
Hashed and roared a withering fire 
from a thousand Yankee marksmen. 
And then another volley. It was a 
dreadful slaughter. They fell like 
grass before the sw'ift sweep of a 
scvthe and the broken ranks turned 



and fled, leaving the hillside strewn 
with their comrades, dead and dying. 
Again they tried the hill and again 
were hurled back, shattered, defeat- 
ed. No flesh could withstand that hail 
ot lead, that awful carnage. 

They huddled in disorder at the 
water's edge and no entreaties or 
commands could move them to try 
again until reinforcements arrived; 
and then a third time as the sun 
went down they rushed to the assault, 
this time with fixed bayonets. But 
our boys had fired their last car- 
tridge and they had no bayonets. 

It had been a gallant fight, one of 
tb.e most desperate and bloody in all 
history for the numbers engaged, but 
it was hopeless, and they retreated 
slowly across Charlestown Neck into 
Cambridge. where Gen. Artemas 
Ward in command held the reserves 
and checked any further British ad- 
vance Gen. Artemas Ward, grand- 
father of our former townswoman. 
Mrs Julia Wells, and great-grand- 
father of Maj. Henry Wells, Tracy 
Wells, Frank and Carrie Wells, whom 
you all knew here years ago. 
But this tale of 

"Old, forgotten, far-off things 
And battles long ago," 
what has this to do with an address 
by me before your Knox County His- 
torical Society? 

It is, perhaps, like comparing 
-reat things with small, but as on 
that summer afternoon in Charles- 
town, unmindful of the bustling 
world so near around me, I saw vis- 
ions and dreamed dreams of great 
deeds done on that sacred soil one 
hundred and twenty years before, so, 
returning as one of the early, one of 
the few surviving colonists after 
more than forty years of absence 
from your city, where my childhood, 
vouth'and early manhood were spent, 
it is not your busy streets, your 
thriving enterprises, your attractive 
residences, your tree-lined avenues, 
I see; my thoughts wander far back 
into the dim receding past, to the 
last days of October, 1836. 

I see a weary little caravan of four 
covered wagons with a one-horse 
wagon in the lead, the Swift and 
Willcox families emerging slowly 
from a small settlement called Knox- 
ville, east of here, and men, women 
and children peering out with curious 
eyes upon a wide, uninhabited prai- 



rie that was to be their future dwel- 
ling place— a forlorn and desolate 
prospect. Not a house, not a tree, 
hardly a sign of any living thing ever 
having passed that way before. It 
was the prairie land we had heard 
stories of a thousand miles away, and 
nothing but prairie as far as the eye 
could reach, except, perhaps, a 
glimpse of a distant forest along the 
northern horizon. 

It was the last stage of a nine 
weeks' journey by wagon from Ver- 
mont across great states to the, at 
that day, extreme verge of civiliza- 
tion, where the friends we had left 
behind had forewarned us there was 
no water to be had, no wood to burn, 
no grain or fruit would grow and 
where hostile savages might take our 
scalps. 

Ah, how many times since then 
have r in midsummer lain down in 
the shade of a shock of wheat, 
grown by my father from that same 
duick, responsive soil, and. watch- 
ing the great Cumuli floating slowly 
overhead — the wide world rimmed 
around by the far off horizon — won- 
dered if the Alps or the Appenines 
could be as grand as those magnifi- 
cent thunderheads glorified by the 
rays of an afternoon sun! And years 
afterwards, returning from foreign 
lands, my memory charged with pic- 
tures of mountains and plains of 
Italy, Switzerland and Scotland, when 
our train struck the prairie this side 
of Chicago my heart leaped to my 
mouth at the first sight of these same 
prairies. I loved them then and I 
have loved them with a boundless 
love ever since. 

But on that autumn day of 1836 
it was different. When our lonesome 
caravan reached the spot where 
Galesburg now stands and welcomes 
her returning sons, my uncle, Bras- 
tus Swift, stood up in his open wagon 
in the lead and called out to my mo- 
ther, "Here, Mary, is where the city 
of Galesburg is to be," and my mo- 
ther shouted back, "Neither you nor 
I, uncle, will live to see it." 

Do you wonder then, my friends, 
that I should seem to myself to be 
in a dream, recalling and comparing 
what then was here and what now 
is? For we, an advance guard of 
the great immigration following, 
were to begin here a fight for exis- 
tence with the unknown forces of 
untamed nature, to build homes 



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ift 
Autkor 



where no homes had ever been, to 
lay foundations, to establish customs 
and laws brought from a great dis- 
tance, to found a church, a school, 
a college which shotild be as a great 
light in the surrounding darkness. 

The name of Dr. Gale, who plan- 
ned this enterprise, can never be for- 
gott-en, for it is imbedded in the 
name of your city, but let it never 
be Vox, et praeterea nihil, a name, 
and nothing more. Let us cherish 
the memory of his personality, his 
r-ourage, his far-sighted philanthropy, 
his always kindly persistence in 
watching over the beginnings and 
vigorous growth of this city and its 
noble institutions. 

Nothing could be more fitting than 
the modest inscription on his tomb- 
stone in your Hope cemetery — Si 
requiris monumentum circumspice — 
If you would see his monument look 
around you. 

Our long pilgrim journey came to 
an end at Log City, Henderson Grove, 
where some thirty families of us, 
some preceding us and some follow- 
ing, spent that winter. They called 
it Henderson Grove, but it was much 
more than a grove, it was a great 
primeval forest ten or twelve miles 
long, and from five to seven miles 
wide, of oak and elm, maple and 
black walnut, as noble a forest as 
ever grew, such a forest as no Ger- 
man, or Frenchman or Englishman 
then living ever saw in his own coun- 
try, or we shall ever see again, I 
fear. 

The few settlers we found living 
here in the edge of the timber were 
mostly Kentuckians, I think, al- 
though we called them Hooslers, — 
as fine, sturdy and hospitable a race 
of men and w^omen as ever faced 
pioneer life, but I remember I suffer- 
ed a great deal from the teasings 
their boys gave me because I was 
a Yankee, a word of opprobrium I 
had never heard before. 

When I implored them to tell me 
how long it would be before I be- 
came a Hoosier, too. they reckoned 
it w^ould take about six months, 
which gave me encouragement. 

Of course so large an influx of 
newcomers upon the few log cabin 
settlers along the edges of the timber 
made it difficult to secure any kind 
of shelter at first. For six weeks our 
two families, thirteen of us. occupied 
Jim Gum's log house of two rooms 
nnd a loft; later my father secured a 



little lean-to, about twelve by fifteen, 
where our family managed somehoA\ 
to survive that first winter of hard- 
ship in a single room much exposes 
to the weather, the snow siftin; 
through on our beds at night, oui 
food hoe cake, salt pork and prairii 
chicken, and not a potato, for the,\ 
had all been securely housed and 
hoarded until spring under mound 
in the garden where they grew. Cel- 
lars were unheard of! But what -a 
luxury was my mother's old, cast iron 
cook stove which came around by tho 
Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississiji 
pi to Yellow Banks, now Oquawka : 
It was a boon to the family when it 
came, as it had been four years be- 
fore to me, for on its iron front, T 
learned from the makers' names m^ 
first A B C's. 

But w^here I ask is that precious 
cook stove now, for it is just such 
old-fashioned, despised household 
furnishings that become heirlooms 
much sought after by collectors thesr 
latter days. 

On Sundays or oftener w^e all gath- 
ered at Log City to meet people of 
our owm kind in church, Sunday 
school and prayer meeting. Here in 
a rude log house Prof. Losey and 
Miss Lucy Gay began that school 
which, transferred the next autumn 
to the prairie, grew from year to year 
to become the fulfillment of Dr. 
Gale's early dream — Knox Manual 
Labor College. 

Now, seventy years afterwards, to 
show, how things come around again 
with time, manual training, some- 
what modified it is true, from Dr. 
Gale's original design, is becoming a 
regular part of instruction even in 
our grammar schools. Which re- 
minds me of another similar coming 
around as the years revolve. While 
teaching school one winter in Major 
Butler's neighborhood some ten miles 
west of here, I met a lady, a relative 
of his, ninety years old. then on a 
visit from her home in Kentucky, and 
many a thrilling tale she told of the 
"dark and bloody ground." and the 
Tnrlian wars when she was young. 
T^Hion they went to church or across 
the oak openings she always rode 
horseback on a pillion 

behind her husband and 

he. with rifle resting across the saddlo 
bow, and hand on rifle, kept his head 
turning in a half circle continually, 
sweeping the whole horizon with his 
glance to be prepared for any sudd'^n 



ambush from the redsljins; and here 
now in our day when we try to cross 
our city streets, we, too, keep our 
heads turning in like manner as on 
a pivot, for fear of a like ambusli 
from an equally savagv? automobile. 

Permit me to recall here the names 
of a few of those brave men and 
equally brave women, all in the early 
prime of life, the first colonists as we 
call them. There was not a gray 
head among them unless it was Fa- 
ther Waters, and it is amusing to me 
now to remember how astonished I 
was when returning east eighteen 
years afterwards, I found there werf 
gray headed men in the world and 
still alive. 

Here arc the names I recall, some 
arriving a few months before the 
Swifts and Willcoxes, and some a few 
months later: The Gales, Ferrises, 
Bunces, Wests, Waters, Hitchcocks, 
Farnhams, Williamses, Averys, 

Paynes, Simmonses, Holyokes, Mills, 
Kendalls, Finches, Stanleys, Pren- 
tices, Dunns, Sandersons, Chamberses, 
Aliens, Phelpses, Gilberts, Hamlins, 
Coltons, Churchills, Kings, Mays, 
Goodells, Hayners, Tylers, McMullens, 
Jerraulds, but are not these names, 
the most of them at least, inscribed 
on imperishable tablets in the vesti- 
bule of your Central church? 

I remember well the first time f 
saw Dr. Gale; not so much, however, 
I confess, because it was Dr. Gale. 
As we passed through Whitesboro, 
N. Y., our long procession from Ver- 
mont halted in front of his house 
and Dr. Gale came down the path 
to greet us, leading by the hand a 
little girl, a vision of beauty to my 
boyish eyes — his daughter, Margaret, 
Maggie Gale, as we knew her later. 
Is there anything under heaven 
sweeter than a bright little maid of 
three years? Remember, she wa? 
only three and I was six, but I fell 
in love with her then and there. And 
through a long acquaintance with her 
afterwards, as girl, school-fellow and 
woman, the sudden admiration I felt 
at that first sight of her has never 
grown less, even though she did ac- 
cept Prof. Hitchcock before me. But 
were not all the Gales remarkable for 
that winning virtue — amiability? 

The spring of 1837 saw work doing 
on this open country, erecting house?*, 
breaking prairie and making sod- 



fences — does anybody here still re- 
member the sod fence that once in- 
closed a part of the college proper- 
ty out along the Monmouth road? 
Shade trees had to be planted, too, 
mostly black locust, traps set for prai- 
rie wolves, rattle snakes in the t^ll 
grass of the sloughs had to be guard- 
ed against, and, in the spring and 
autumn we had to fight the prairie 
fires that came blazing and roaring 
down on us from the ridge south in 
magnificent but terrifying array miles 
long. 

One pronounced characteristic cf 
the colonists was their homogeneity; 
they were all from New England or 
one remove from New England, from 
New York, trained in one school, in 
the sturdy religious convictions hand- 
ed down from their Puritan forefa- 
thers. But they were no swillers of 
beer nor was our pure prairie air ever 
contaminated by them with the vile 
stench of tobacco smoke. 

Outside the stern necessity of mak- 
ing a living by daily labor and the 
primal object of giving their children 
a good education, three vital ques- 
tions dominated their lives — the ques- 
tions of temperance, abolitionism and 
conversion of lost souls, this last first 
and foremost. 

In every original deed to land sold 
by the college was a clause forbid- 
ding the making or selling of liquor 
in any form on the premises under 
penalty of forfeiture of the title. We 
were all temperance people in those 
days. Everybody signed the pledge, 
or almost everybody. When I was 
seven years old the pledge was pre- 
sented to me with the request to sign 
it as a matter of course,, the others 
all did. "Does that forbid cider?" 1 
asked. "Yes, my son, that certainly 
forbids cider." But I remembered 
how my old grandfather, back on the 
shores of Lake Champlain, used to 
smack his lips over a mug of hard ci- 
der brought up from the cellar, made 
from apples in his own orchard, and 
I had always wanted to know how 
that cider tasted. So I declined with 
thanks and have never signed the 
pledge to this day, nor broken it eith- 
er. Yet at a Thanksgiving dinner 
in Berlin some years after when thir- 
ty-five of us young American stu- 
dents had assembled in memory of 
our old home, as fine a lot of fellows 



as i ever knew, nearly every one of 
them holding honored professorships 
afterwards in American colleges, ev- 
ery one but one had signed the pledge 
when a young man at home, and ev- 
ery one but one drank wine at the 
table. I didn't blame them so much, 
but, for myself, I remembered Gales- 
burg, 111. 

But our pronounced abolitionism 
made us a by-word and anathema to 
all the country round. Since we had 
then no large hall or opera house our 
big gatherings, our Fourth of July 
celebrations which were invariably 
anti-slavery meetings, were often in 
summer held in large arbors built of 
boughs and branches hauled by wagon 
loads from Henderson Grove and 
erected on or near the site of your 
present Union Hotel. Here I first felt 
the inspiring influence of a really 
great orator — Ichabod Codding — one 
of the greatest I ever listened to. As 
for music, we had Samuel Bacon, his 
fiddle and his well trained young peo- 
ple's chorus. ISTo town was ever more 
fortunate than Galesburg in having 
so thoroughly trained a musician as 
he was in laying the foundations of a 
musical culture for future generations 
of singers, for he was an educated, 
enthusiastic musician, every fibre of 
him. 

At one or more of these great abo- 
lition gatherings under that immense 
arbor of green boughs, the occasion 
was graced, I am proud to say, by 
the presence of two distinguished 
artists in song, a Parepa Rosa and 
Brignoli in short clothes, little Miss 
Margaret Gale and little Master Eras- 
tus Willcox. You smile, and it is 
funny to think of, two little tots as 
we were, lifted up on a high bench in 
front of the chorus to entertain with 
juvenile songs and Mr. Bacon's fiddle 
a crowded audience of solemn Aboli- 
tionists. It makes me squirm to 
think of it. It was that glorious 
fiddle that did it, to be forever re- 
membered and identified with those 
early Galesburg entertainments. 

But after all, the most important 
thing, the chief end of man in those 
days in Galesburg, was to get con- 
verted and join the church; that is 
for the younger generation, for all the 
old folks belonged to the church al- 
ready, or almost all. I remember 



only one lonely exception later and 
after President Blanchard came in 
1846, that was David Egerton, archi- 
tect of our old First Church. During 
one of those revival seasons all the 
guns and prayers had been turned on 
him. but he could not be persuaded to 
come forward and make a profession 
of religion. Meeting him one day on 
the street alone. President Blanchard 
began laboring with him, threatening 
him, even, with the awful and sure 
fate awaiting him in the next world, 
if he did not join the church now, 
while mercy was freely offered and 
the lamp held out to burn. 

I never shall forget what a shud- 
der of pious horror went through my 
soul when it was reported that David 
Edgerton, that honest, upright man, 
had positively declined, assuring 
President Blanchard that he believed 
himself to be as good a man as Pres- 
ident Blanchard himself, even if he 
did not belong to the church; for we 
were taught that the more moral and 
upright a man might be in this life, 
if he were not converted and one of 
the elect, the more awful was the 
fate awaiting him in the next. 

David so far as I know never 
joined the church; he went to his ac- 
count long ago, but how he settled 
that account I have never heard. 

We had in those days revivals every 
winter, as part of a regular winter's 
course — prayer-meeting before break- 
fast, at noon, after school and ser- 
mons served to us hot every night; 
everybody on hand, everybody ex- 
pected to s^tand up and give his testi- 
mony. 

Now my father, although always a 
member and sometime elder in the 
church, lacked the gift of tongues, 
exhorting was not his strong point, 
and I never shall forget how hurt he 
was when President Blanchard. at one 
of the week-day meetings when ev- 
erybody was in a wrought up state 
of mind, pointed his finger at him in 
the seat before him and said: "An! 
there is Brother Willcox, I have not 
seen a green leaf on. him." 

But it was previous to this in the 
winter of 1839-40, if I remember 
rightly, when we had the first awak- 
ening that I felt, when I was barely 
ten years old, attending the district 
school in the old Academy building 
up stairs. 



—5- 



Our teacher was a young man with 
a soul on fire, by the name of W. C 
VanMeter, and, what with him pour- 
ing hot shot into us sinful youngsters 
and the Rev. Horatio Foote as chief 
revivalist doing the same to the old- 
er folks, we were kept moving pretty 
lively and the devil on the run. 

Our school numbered about fifty 
scholars and, as soon as it struck 12 
at noon, books and slates were laid 
aside, our little lunches, brought 
with us to save time for more seriOus 
business, were soon swallowed and 
then, seated in solemn rows around 
the four sides of the room, we had 
a season of prayer. Van Tuyle Gil- 
bert, a handsome fellow, the tallest 
poppy in that field of wheat, took 
the only chair at the head of the 
room and led off with a hymn in 
which we all joined with unction. 
Then down we all dropped on our 
knees and praying began at the head 
of the row, proceeding without break 
until about a dozen had confessed 
what hardened sinners they were and 
begged forgiveness for themselves 
and a few other obstinate little 
wretches. Then up we all rose, an- 
other hymn, and down we went again 
for another dozen until we had gone 
the rounds. It was so soul satisfying 
to us kids! But in furtively peeping 
through my fingers once I observed 
with alarm that my cousin, Janet 
Follett, had not gone down on her 
knees with the others, but, on the 
contrary, sat bolt upright through 
the praying with eyes wide open. Oh, 
how anxious I felt for her precious 
soul, and how I labored with her on 
the way home to effect a change of 
heart. 

•A little later, our school room be- 
ing needed for other uses, we boys 
trooped over in a body after school 
to a little shop on what is now^ Broad 
street, opposite your Santa Fe depot. 
Two of the older boys climbed up 
into the loft and began passing down 
a few brooms they found stored there, 
for sweeping the floor and saving our 
trou.sers. Now Mart Gilbert and T 
were of the .same mature age, ten, 
and were good chums, and as we were 
burning to serve the Lord and be 
seen doing it, we demanded brooms, 
too, but were denied them as being 
too small for such a prominent re- 
spon.sibility. Whereupon. I regret to 
say, we became a little huffy — a pure- 
ly righteous wrath, — and told them to 



go ahead w^ith their prayer meeting, 
we would have one of our own, and, 
shaking the dust off our feet, we 
marched across the road to a little 
.stable opposite, climbed up through 
a small gable wMndow facing our 
friends, and with plenty of clean hay 
to kneel on, started another meet- 
ing. 

We sang a hymn, and sang it loud, 
more I fear for the edification of our 
friends opposite than for that of the 
angels above; then Martin led in 
prayer and I followed, then singing 
find praying turn about with one eye 
all the time on the party over the 
way until they broke up, shut up 
shop and started solemnly up the 
hill home. Then Martin and I had 
one more round and, climbing dowai, 
follow^ed after with the immense sat- 
isfaction that we had had a more 
edifying season than the union shop 
opposite. 

Among other pious admonitions, 
Mr. Van Meter one day called our 
attention to the fact that it was an 
unbecoming thing for young convert:- 
t<; indulge in worldly sports, games. 
Or play of any kind. We therefore 
trok a vow to be guilty of no such 
sin again. So for many days we 
boys marched around during recess 
wnth our hands thrust deep down in 
our trousers' pockets as a safe pre- 
caution, this way and that, up and 
downi — a most forlorn lot of self- 
righteous little scamps. 

But spring came and there hap- 
pened to be a large straw stack in 
Deacon Holyoke's back yard near by, 
corner of Main and Prairie streets. 
T do not know what spirit of evil it 
w^as that led us over that w^ay one 
noon, but w^e discovered the straws and 
admired it, w^e approached it, walked 
round it and looked it all over wist- 
fully but as solemn as owls. Sudden- 
ly one of the little sinners, forgetful 
of his vows, and indifferent to the aw- 
ful consequences, made a short run 
and turned a somersault in the straw. 
It was more than boyish nature could 
withstand. In five minutes every boy 
of us w^as tumbling, and rolling -and 
wrestling in that straw^ That w^as the 
end of the season's revival in Mr. Van 
Meter's school. 

If you think my story of these early 
days is overdrawn, I beg you to re- 
member that our fathers, our religious 
teachens, were the lineal descendants 



of the Puritans and held still without 
questioning to the same literal inter- 
pretations of scripture they did, and 
that it was at that time barely one 
hundred years since Jonathan Ed- 
wards preached his famous sermon 
entitled "Sinners in the hands of an 
angry, God." It may shock you byt 
let me read you a few paragraphs 
from that discourse, as showing how 
different their views were from ours 
now concer}iing God as the all lov- 
ing, all merciful Father of his off- 
spring, the whole human race, the 
Shepherd of the "po' lost sheep of his 
sheepfold." 

•'There is nothing that keeps wicked 
men any one moment out of hell but 
the sovereign pleasure of God. They 
deserve . to be cast into hell, justice 
calls aloud for an infinite punishment 
of their sins. The devil stands ready 
to fall upon them and seize them as 
his own at what moment God shall 
permit him." "This is the case of 
every one of you unconverted persons 
that are out of Christ. That lake of 
burning brimstone is extended abroad 
under you." "There is a dreadful 
-pit of the glowing flames of the wrath 
of God, there is Hell's wide, gaping 
mouth open." "The God that holds 
you over the pit of hell, much as one 
holds a spider or some loathsome in- 
sect over a fire, abhors you." "This 
is the dismal case of every soul in 
this congregation that has not been 
born again, however moral or strict, 
sober or righteous he may otherwise 
be." "There is no other reason to be 
given why you have not dropped into 
hell since you arose in the morning 
but that God's hand held you up." 
There is no other reason why you have 
not gone to hell since you have sat 
here in the house of God. Yea, there 
is nothing else to be given as a rea- 
son why you do not at this very mo- 
ment drop down into hell." 

Incredible as it may seem that such 
doctrines could ever have been 
preached from the sacred pulpit, yet 
there they are in Vol. 7, page 163, of 
a ten volume edition of Jonathan Ed- 
wards' life and works, in our Peoria 
Public Library, preached July 8, 1741, 
in Enfield, Massachusetts, and attend- 
ed, it says, with remarkable impres- 
sions on many of the hearers, which 
I should think likely. 

And let me remind you further that 
at the time I am speaking of here 
that noted revivalist Burchard In the 



east and the Rev. C. C. Finney, Presi- 
dent of Oberlin College, Ohio, were 
preaching brimstone and thunderbolts 
in only a little less lurid style, per- 
haps, everywhere, as were our re- 
vivalists here. But not Dr. Gale so 
far as I remember. He was too kind 
hearted a man, too much of a Chris- 
tian as we now understand it, too 
much of a gentleman. 

I would not again go through the 
terror, the torment of soul I suffered 
for four or five years after I began 
to pay attention to sermons, not even 
to save lUy own — well, not for any- 
thing. 

Overdrawn? No, I have given you 
the plain, unvarnished recollections 
of a sensitive child who suffered and 
bears the scars on his soul to this 
day. 

And yet, and yet, when nearly every 
day brings its story of blood-curdling 
crime I recall Burns' lines — 
"The fear o' hell's a hangman's whip 
"To baud the wretcly in order," 
and I am not sure /bxar the dreadful 
doctrine had its uses and may yet be 
wanted again. 

I have spoken of Prest. Blanchard 
in connection with the religious re- 
vivals but I should be sorry to leave 
the impression that I did not recognize 
and admire his many superior quali- 
ties as teacher, preacher, orator and 
leader of men, in each and all of 
which broad fields of human endeavor 
he was one of the ablest men I ever 
knew. 

If he was at times a little too over- 
bearing in trying to bring men to his 
views it was but a virtue carried to 
extremes — the almost inevitable char- 
acteristic of an exceptionality power- 
ful intellect and strong will when 
dealing with matters of the church. Ii 
was the same with Bishop Philander 
Chase of Jubilee College and Bishop 
Whitehouse of Chicago, in their day. 

Making allowance for this I think it 
not too much to say that he was the 
ablest man ever known in Galesburg, 
at least so far as my acquaintance 
goes. 

At the age of thirteen — and you will 
remember we had only one year of 
preparatory Latin and Greek in those 
days — I was admitted as a freshman in 
Knox college, to the class in which my 
old friends Henry Sanderson and 
James Dunn graduated in 184 7, but 
on the advice of my professors and 
greatly to my disappointment, my 



father refused to let me go on; I was 
too young, perhaps a little precocious, 
my health would break down. I did 
not believe it then nor do I now, but 
no matter. I finally entered in 1S47 
in the class with Comstock and 
Churchill, a class of twenty-seven, the 
laigest ever entering up to that date; 
but the California gold fever struck 
us in 18 4 9. our class felt it and we 
graduated in 1851, a class of seven 
'•nly. 

With what tender affection do we 
college men remember our old class 
mates living or dead. Outside of fami- 
ly ties there are none so hallow^ed, so 
strong. And so also with our pro- 
fessors, the men who had the mould- 
ing of our characters during the four 
most impressionable ' years of life, in 
our day Professors Gale, Losey and 
Grant, and in our senior year, Prest. 
Blanchard — could we ever repay the 
debt we owe them? Only by follow- 
ing in their steps or by training other 
succeeding generations of pupils as 
Professors Comstjock and Churchill 
did for more than forty faithful years 
in the same college. 

And this college, Knox college, can 
I ever cease to remember with grati- 
tude and affection the debt I owe to 
her and those honored names, her 
Professors, for the education they 
gave me here? If it had been possible 
since then to take from me what, in 
the days of my youth she gave me, it 
would have been robbing me of half 
my very life and soul. 

There are colleges today with more 
modern, flamboyant pretentions in 
their courses of study but I must be 
permitted to doubt whether they do 
better work, give any better ground- 
ing in those essentials that go to the 
foi-mation of character and fitting for 
the activities of a strenuous life, than 
was, and, I believe, still is given right 
here in my beloved Alma Mater. 

George ChurchilL my nearest neigh- 
bor when we were boys, my classmate 
and roommate for four years in col- 
lege, my most intimate friend, closer 
than a brother all his life, was an hon- 
est man if there ever was one, honest, 
upright and true in every relation of 
life, in every calling wherein he was 
called. He had chosen medicine for 
his career but, on graduating, accept- 
ed temporarily a situation with the 
new railroad then working towards 



Galesburg from Aurora, 111., called the 
Central Military Tract R. R., now the 
C, B. & Q. 

I do not doubt that if he had con- 
tinued with that company he would 
have risen by sure degrees to become 
a civil engineer, division superinten- 
dent, general manager, and at last, 
president of the road, and have left 
an estate of a million dollars for his 
heirs, but I had set my heart on see- 
ing the old world and wanted him to 
go with me. I persuaded him to throw 
up his situation, save a little money 
by teaching private school two years 
while I, to learn the language, lived 
in" a German family in Peoria, and so 
in September 18 54, we two young fel- 
lows landed in Liverpool and dis- 
covered England. For, read about it 
as you may at home, you really do 
not know there is such a place as Eng- 
land until you put your foot in it. . 

And we made the grand tour to- 
gether — the first Illinoisans who ever 
did it — London, Berlin, Dresden, 
Prague, Vienna, Venice, Florence, 
Rome, Genoa, Switzerland, Paris, 
crossing the Appenines and the Alps 
on foot. 

Knowing as we do now, what no 
man could have foreseen then, the 
enormous development of our coun- 
try and of railroads in the last fifty 
years, I have sometimes asked my- 
self whether it would not have been 
better for him to have staid with the 
railroad and not gone with me. I 
never dared ask him the question and 
he never hinted a reproach to me for 
overpersuading him. But looking at 
it at this distance of time, remember- 
ing also in comparison, the thousands 
of young men and women who revere 
his name and bless his memory 
for the good he did them 
as teacher, counsellor and friend, the 
seed he planted of noble thoughts and 
deeds which shall bear fruit for gener- 
ations yet to come, looking at it in 
all its bearings, in the cold light of 
eternity, in which field of human en- 
deavor would he have been the bet- 
ter servant of God and man? 

I will not attempt to answer the 
question here, it is too personal a mat- 
ter with me. I leave it confidently 
with you, his townspeople, neighbors 
and friends, who knew him long and 
well, to answer the question for me. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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